The magnetic-recording, hard-disk-drive (HDD) industry is extremely competitive. The demands of the market for ever increasing storage capacity, storage speed, and other enhancement features compounded with the desire for low cost creates tremendous pressure for manufacturing economies and improved reliability. Therefore, reliability improvements and associated cost savings that can be found attract significant attention on the part of engineers assigned the task of developing and manufacturing these complex devices.
One area of the manufacturing process where considerable economies can be made is in the reduction of the number of parts used in the HDD through the implementation of commonality in design. Therefore, engineers are constantly striving to find designs both to reduce the number of parts through commonality, and the attending assembly costs associated with those parts, and to improve the reliability of the assembled HDD. Therefore, lowering the cost of HDDs and improving the reliability of HDDs through innovations directed towards common designs across HDD platforms and improved reliability are of paramount importance for maintaining a competitive edge in the HDD manufacturing business.